Sometimes, during the offseason, I find myself going weeks without thinking about a particular NHL team. Like a ‘Oh yeah, those guys exist too,’ sort of experience.
All of those teams live in the Metropolitan Division.
But still, there are a lot of big markets in this division: Washington DC plays its games here, three teams in the New York/New Jersey area play here, and the Philly team is here as well. Beyond that, it also features two of the game’s elder statesmen in Sidney Crosby on the Penguins and Alexander Ovechkin on the Capitals.
But, BetMGM has the Metropolitan as the division with the longest odds (+350) to win the Stanley Cup.
Now that I’ve got all of my whining out of the way, here’s a preview of how these teams are looking headed into the 2025-26 season with odds as of September 29.
Carolina Hurricanes
- Win Stanley Cup Odds: +950
- Win Conference Odds: +425
- Win Division Odds: +125
- Make Playoff Odds: -1200
The only thing keeping the odds on the Metropolitan Division winner from being +1000 is the Hurricanes.
Carolina has the fifth-best odds to win the Stanley Cup at the moment, trailing the Oilers and ahead of the Stars. They also have the second-best odds to win the Eastern Conference, behind the Panthers.
It’s hard to call this a Cup-or-bust season for the Hurricanes, but it’s something close.
Carolina has failed to make a genuine run at the Stanley Cup over the last few years despite having one of the league’s most talented rosters. They seem to be a team that’s always on the cusp and always falling short.
Since head coach Rob Brind’Amour was hired before the 2018-19 season, the Hurricanes have made the Conference Finals three times, but have only won one game across those three series.
Still, the reason why it’s hard to call it a cup-or-bust season for Carolina is how young their core is. Seth Jarvis is only 23, Sebastian Aho is only 28, Nikolaj Ehlers is only 29 and Logan Stankoven is only 22. Most of these guys are either pre-prime or right in the middle of it.
If they don’t get it done this year, there still should be a few more years of contention for them. The 2026 playoff run, though, might be as good a chance for the Hurricanes to strike as they’ve had throughout this run.
Their only real foe in the East is Florida, a team coming off three-straight Stanley Cup runs. The wear and tear is already showing with Matthew Tkachuk’s injury and could continue to manifest in more injuries within the Panthers’ lineup.
If any team in the conference or the league can take down Florida, it might be Carolina.
New Jersey Devils
- Win Stanley Cup Odds: +1700
- Win Conference Odds: +800
- Win Division Odds: +310
- Make Playoff Odds: -325
New Jersey’s another team that’s in an awkward grey area between ‘Yeah, I guess we could win the Cup,’ and ‘Okay, we have to win the Cup this year.’
Having a team built around a 24-year-old superstar, in Jack Hughes, who has yet to enter his traditional prime years, makes deciding when to go all in a little trickier.
The Devils somehow made the playoffs last year, only their second playoff berth in the previous five years, despite injuries to Hughes that should have sunk the team. New Jersey finished as the three-seed in the Metro with a 42-33-7 record.
Last year was also the second straight year that Hughes missed 20 games in a row. The most games that the young center has ever played in his NHL career was 78 in the 2022-23 season. Before that, he played 49, 56, and 61 games in the previous three seasons.
Keeping Hughes’ injuries at bay will be a significant priority for the Devils this year, and it will likely be the number one key to the team’s success.
They showed they can win in the regular season without Hughes’ involvement but getting to the playoffs and actually being a contender are two different things. Hughes will need to be a reliable member of the team for New Jersey to have real success.
If the 2025-26 season is a bounce-back year for Hughes, where he plays up to his level in 2022-23 when he scored 99 points for the Devils, they may have a chance to snatch a Division win away from the Hurricanes.
Washington Capitals
- Win Stanley Cup Odds: +3000
- Win Conference Odds: +1500
- Win Division Odds: +500
- Make Playoff Odds: -250
Most figured that Ovechkin’s final years in the league would be played out with little intrigue besides the future of Hall of Famer chasing records.
Last season proved that Washington can still be a contender with the 40-year-old. Oh, and he also already got the record.
Thanks to a few savvy moves from GM Chris Patrick and the Capitals front office, they’re once again a factor in the hierarchy of the Eastern Conference.
Washington had a 51-22-9 record last season, earning the first seed in the Metropolitan Division. They also were able to escape the first round for the first time since winning the Stanley Cup in 2018.
The playoff run was short-lived, however, as the Capitals lost in five games to Carolina in the second round.
Is that success repeatable for Washington, or did we just see one final good year out of the Ovechkin-led franchise? The emergence of centers Dylan Strome and Aliaksei Protas for the Capitals last season suggests that last year wasn’t that fluky, and there’s more to this team than just Ovechkin.
Strome had 29 goals and 53 assists in 82 games played, and Protas had 30 goals and 36 assists.
Outside of those two, Washington still has 31-year-old forward Tom Wilson hanging on — Wilson scored the second-most goals on the Caps last season, behind Ovehckin — and there’s also 27-year-old defenseman Jakob Chychrun.
The biggest X-factor for whether Washington can keep this contending window open is second-year forward Ryan Leonard, who only appeared in nine games at the end of last season.
Leonard was already a highly-ranked prospect out of the US National Development program when he was drafted eighth overall by the Capitals in 2023. His stock rose even further after two 30-goal seasons on a stacked Boston College roster.
If he can become as good a player as scouts and analysts think he can, that has the potential to change the whole order of this Division and maybe the Conference for the next few years.
New York Rangers
- Win Stanley Cup Odds: +2800
- Win Conference Odds: +1300
- Win Division Odds: +550
- Make Playoff Odds: -190
New York’s most significant move this offseason was moving on from Peter Laviolette after two seasons and hiring former Penguins coach Mike Sullivan.
The hiring of Sullivan could signal that the Rangers are intent on contending this season and have absolute belief in their roster. Or could it be a typical New York City glitz-and-glamour, smoke-and-mirrors Jedi mind trick, where they hire a buzzy head coach to make people think they have a good team when, in reality, they have nothing?
Last season was such an ungodly trainwreck for the Rangers that I can understand wanting to cover it up with a Gucci band-aid.
Did you forget that New York won the Presidents’ Trophy in 2024? Because I sure did.
They followed that season with a 37-36-7 record in 2024-25, despite rolling out a roster that was largely unchanged.
Things got so bad for the Rangers that they traded their captain, Jacob Trouba, to Anaheim two months before the trade deadline, following a 5-1 loss at MSG against New Jersey, when the team had a 13-10-1 record.
It’s worth mentioning that there were also some major off-ice issues in New York last season, including a settlement made between star forward Artemi Panarin and a Rangers employee who had accused him of sexual assault.
Additionally, there was ongoing strangeness surrounding the team’s social media feeds, which featured a surprising lack of content, and the team’s traditional pregame tunnel videos appeared to be filmed by a security camera. Fans made a logical connection between this and a report that claimed that the team’s social media staff were banned from traveling with the team due to an incident in the 2023-24 season.
Not much has changed in the team’s makeup since the end of last season. In the offseason, the team signed defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov away from Los Angeles. They also gave an extension to defenseman Matt Rempe, who has 138 penalty minutes in his first two seasons in the league, despite splitting time between the pros and the minors.
With only modest improvements since last year, it will be up to newly-hired Coach Sullivan to sort out whether this year’s Rangers team is a Presidents’ Trophy winner or a playoff-misser.
Columbus Blue Jackets
- Win Stanley Cup Odds: +10000
- Win Conference Odds: +5000
- Win Division Odds: +3000
- Make Playoff Odds: +200
The Blue Jackets had an inspirational season last year in the face of the tragic death of their franchise player, Johnny Gaudreau, in the 2024 offseason.
Columbus finished two points behind the Devils for the final spot in the Division despite a 40-33-9 record.
It was the kind of end to the season that lets you know that sports aren’t actually scripted because there’s no way Gary Bettman liked that a Hughes-less New Jersey made the playoffs over the storybook Blue Jackets.
Now, Columbus can try to build on that surprising season and hopefully clinch their first playoff berth since the 2019-20 season.
New York Islanders
- Win Stanley Cup Odds: +15000
- Win Conference Odds: +6000
- Win Division Odds: +3300
- Make Playoff Odds: +220
The main question for the Islanders this season will be how big an impact their number one draft selection, Matthew Schaefer, can have on his team.
The 18-year-old defenseman became a consensus number one pick as the draft neared last season. He was most recently a member of the Erie Otters in the OHL. Last season, in 17 games started, he had seven goals and 15 assists.
Schaefer has a lot to live up to with the recent history of first overall picks, as both Connor Bedard, drafted in 2023, and Macklin Celebrini, drafted in 2024, have had immediate impacts at the professional level.
It hasn’t necessarily translated into wins for either the Blackhawks or the Sharks, who remain bottom feeders in the league, but both have proved scouts right.
There’s more talent on this New York roster than on those other teams, though.
The Islanders held on to Mathew Barzal and Bo Horvat at the trade deadline last year and added free agent forward Jonathan Drouin over the summer. Drouin dealt with injuries last season in Colorado in the 2024-25 season, but still managed to contribute 37 points to the Avalanche’s offense.
Philadelphia Flyers
- Win Stanley Cup Odds: +15000
- Win Conference Odds: +6600
- Win Division Odds: +4000
- Make Playoff Odds: +230
One of the more interesting mixes of market and star is the Flyers and Trevor Zegras.
Hockey fans have soured on Zegras, who was once a darling NHL prospect who was featured on the cover of EA NHL, over the last few seasons due to his on-ice antics and his failure to develop quickly enough. Zegras’ image as a brat isn’t helped by the fact that he’s also dating a famous TikToker.
Mix that with a city, in Philadelphia, whose identity is sort of antithetical to that of a bratty, more-hype-than-results player, and you have a semi-tenuous relationship right off the bat.
Flyers fans are probably hoping this goes more Bryce Harper than Ben Simmons this season and that Zegras can contribute enough to help Philly make the playoffs for the first time since 2020.
Pittsburgh Penguins
- Win Stanley Cup Odds: +30000
- Win Conference Odds: +10000
- Win Division Odds: +10000
- Make Playoff Odds: +600
The eyes of the NHL world will probably be focused more on the Pittsburgh general manager, Kyle Dubas, than on any non-Sidney Crosby player this season. Dubas has the unfortunate responsibility, along with ownership, to decide whether or not Crosby will retire as a Penguin, and that decision may come to a head this season.
Every NHL fan wants to see Crosby on a competitive roster again, and any non-Pittsburgh fan doesn’t care where it happens.
For his part, Crosby has made it clear that he’s fine being a member of the Penguins, at least, for now.
“This is where I want to be, I love it here,” Crosby said in a September interview.
Crosby also acknowledges that the trade buzz is understandable given the state of Pittsburgh’s team.
Right now, the Penguins’ odds to win the Stanley Cup are some of the lowest in the NHL, and they’re a +600 underdog to make the playoffs.
Stranger things have happened, but the odds of a competitive season in Pittsburgh are slim to none. The only real headlines that will be generated this year will come from continued trade buzz.
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